Alan Turing

Pattern formation and mathematical biology
Turing worked from 1952 until his death in 1954 on mathematical biology, specifically morphogenesis. He published one paper on the subject called "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" in 1952. His central interest in the field was understanding Fibonacci phyllotaxis, the existence of Fibonacci numbers in plant structures. He used reaction-diffusion equations which are now central to the field of pattern formation. Later papers went unpublished until 1992 when Collected Works of A.M. Turing was published.


Prosecution for homosexual acts and Turing's death
Turing was a homosexual during a period when homosexual acts were illegal and homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness. In 1952, Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old recent acquaintance of his (cf. Hodges' book pp.449-455) helped an accomplice to break into Turing's house, and Turing went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray, and they were charged with gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Turing was unrepentant and was convicted. He was given the choice between imprisonment and probation, conditional on him undergoing hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. In order to avoid going to jail, he accepted the oestrogen hormone injections, which lasted for a year, with side effects including the development of breasts. His conviction led to a removal of his security clearance and prevented him from continuing consultancy for GCHQ on cryptographic matters.

In 1954, he died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten. The apple itself was never tested for contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death was established by a post-mortem. Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide. It is rumoured that this method of self-poisoning was in tribute to Turing's beloved film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Friends of his have said that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. The possibility of assassination has also been suggested (in the book Code-Breaker by Jim Holt), owing to Turing's involvement in the secret service and the perception of Turing as a security risk due to his homosexuality.

In the book, Zeroes and Ones, author Sadie Plant speculates that the rainbow Apple logo with a bite taken out of it was an homage to Turing. This is unlikely as Gilbert Baker's rainbow pride flag, a gay pride emblem, was designed two years after the Apple logo, thus negating the possibility of it referring to Turing's sexuality.


Posthumous recognition
Since 1966, the Turing Award has been given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person for technical contributions to the computing community. It is widely considered to be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in the computing world.

In 1994 a stretch of the Manchester city inner ring road was named Alan Turing Way.

On 23 June 1998, on what would have been Turing's 86th birthday, Andrew Hodges, his biographer, unveiled an official English Heritage Blue Plaque on his childhood home in Warrington Crescent, London, now the Colonnade hotel [1], [2].


Alan Turing memorial statue in Sackville ParkA statue of Turing was unveiled in Manchester on June 23, 2001. It is in Sackville Park, between the University of Manchester building on Whitworth Street and the Canal Street 'gay village'. To mark the 50th anniversary of his death, a memorial plaque was unveiled at his former residence, Hollymeade, in Wilmslow on June 7, 2004.


Plaque marking Turing's homeThe Alan Turing Institute was initiated by UMIST and University of Manchester in Summer 2004.

A celebration of Turing's life and achievements was held at the University of Manchester on 5 June 2004; it was arranged by the British Logic Colloquium and the British Society for the History of Mathematics.

On October 28, 2004 a bronze statue of Alan Turing sculpted by John W. Mills was unveiled at the University of Surrey [3]. The statue marks the 50th anniversary of Turing's death. It portrays Turing carrying his books across the campus.

Holtsoft produces a programming language named for Turing. The language is designed for beginner programmers and has no direct access to the hardware.

The Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico named a computer laboratory for graduate studies the Turing Lab.

The University of Texas at Austin has an honours computer science program named the Turing Scholars.

The Boston GLBT pride organization named Turing their 2006 Honorary Grand Marshal

Istanbul Bilgi University organizes an annual conference on the theory of computation called Turing Days.

Carnegie Mellon University has a granite bench, situated in The Hornbostel Mall, with the name "Alan Turing" carved across the top, "Read" down the left leg, and "Write" down the other.


Los Andes University of Bogotá, Colombia, has a computer laboratory available to all students called "Alan Turing".


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